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While Massachusetts did indeed provide a structural model for Obamacare, it is the replication of Massachusetts' admitted flaws that should cause any thoughtful legislator to recoil from shoving it down the throats of the rest of the country. These include, in former Massachusetts health secretary Tim Murphy's words, "overreaching social planning" and its fiscal consequences. In fact, the bulk of Murphy's commentary is devoted to what went wrong, which Obamacare replicates nearly point by point. His basic message is this: we got the reform part right -- Republicans and Democrats pretty much agree on that anyway --but the insurance subsidization part was a government expansion disaster.

Subsidizing and mandating insurance coverage for non-catastrophic care, as this bill does, is not a laudable goal; in fact, it exacerbates the greatest threat to both health care and the government's fiscal health: medical inflation. On the other hand, making health care service -- not just insurance -- cheaper and more competitive, insurance more flexible and portable, and consumer choices smarter, is essential. But Obamacare, like the worst of the Massachusetts experiment, takes health care in the opposite direction and beyond by crudely throwing trillions in taxpayer dollars at the problem. Moreover, it does so at a time when the consequences of its consumer price inoculation and fee-for-service reimbursement are well-demonstrated in the insolvency of Medicare. Accordingly, any congressman who spills his blood on behalf of this bill will only see it sopped up by a bulging metastasis. Some legacy.

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